stalemate

t. To subject to a stale-mate; hence, to push or drive into a corner, to bring to a stand. stāle (2), stail, steal, steale, stele, steel, s. [A. S. stæl, stel; Dut. steel; Ger. stiel =a stalk (q. v.).] 1. A long handle. "It hath a long stale or handle, with a button at the end for one's hand." - Mortimer: Husbandry. 2. A round or rung of a ladder. stāle, v. t. & i. [STALE, a.] A. Trans.: To make stale. vapid, tastele , usele , or worthle ; to destroy the life, beauty, or use of. "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her intinite variety." Shakesp.: Antony and Cleopatra , ii. 2. B. In trans .: To make water. (Said of horses and cattle.) "I found my horses unfortunately staled in the night." -Field, Jan. 30, 1886. *stāle-lý, adv. [ Eng.stale , a.; -ly.] 1. In a stale manner. IMG:content-0177.png:[blocks in formation] *1. Lit .: A horse, or figure like a horse, behind which a fowler concealed himself from the sight of the game he was following. "When the game was not to be run down with horse and hound, various stratagems were used to get within shooting reach of it by the pedestrian huntsmen, the chief of which was called the stalking -horse. This was a canvas figure, resembling a horse in the act of grazing; and so light that it could be carried in one hand. Some 2. Of old; for a long time. (Ben Jonson: Cat i line, times the figure represented acow, stag, or other common ii. 1.) IMG:content-0178.png:[blocks in formation] I. Ordinary Language: *1. One of the side-pieces of a ladder. "To climben by the ronges and the stalkes." Chaucer: C. T., 3,624. 2. In the same sense as II. 2. "From a stalk into an ear forth-growes." Spenser: Ruins of Rome. 3. The stem of a quill; anything resembling the stalk or stem of a plant. "They appear made up of little bladders, like those in the plume or stalk of a quill."-Grew. 4. A tall chimney, usually of a furnace; a stack. II. Technically: 1. Arch .: An ornament in a Corinthian capital, which resembles the stalk of a plant, and which is sometimes fluted. From it the volutes and helices spring. 2. Biol .: The stem or support of an organ, as the petiole of a leaf, the peduncle of a flower, or that of a brachiopod, a barnacle, . 3. Founding : An iron rod armed with spikes, forming the nucleus of a core.